Never mentioned among the best Coen brothers movies, and for a reason. Which is to say, it’s merely a very good movie with a few touches of greatness. Set in the 1950s, and highly styled with everybody talking like Edward G. Robinson (including Jennifer Jason Leigh, which is strange at first), Tom Robbins plays a hapless mail room clerk promoted to the CEO of a major corporation in an effort to tank the stock so the board can buy a controlling share.
It plays into some of the cinematic stereotypes the Coens thankfully learned quickly to avoid, and the story is entertaining but not novel in the way so many of their movies are—until the ending, which is vintage Coen Brothers and really kind of redeems everything. But you wait through a long B+ movie waiting for an A- ending.
Sam Raimi shares a writing credit, which makes sense… it’s got a very slight bit of fun but perhaps conventional edge to it.
Still, it was good, though. I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it but it certainly has the baseline of quality filmmaking and off-kilter humor you can expect from the Coens, if no more than that. I still think it’s a step down from their previous film, the brilliant Barton Fink.